Blood Bowl The Blue Claw Strikers in the Tournament of the Seas
by Donrocs1
Summary: The Blue Claw Strikers, the absolute and positive... Disasters of sports. Lacking the proper skills and training can have its negative effects, no human knows that better than their coach, Rune. However, their luck just might change under a secret passport their head cheerleader is carrying to a Tournament. The Tournament of the Seas.


Chapter 1.

Rookies.

The object sailed through the air like a spear, spinning on spiked edges, and hailing from above with valor only matched by angels of incoming death.

The thing was round, held a brownish texture to it, and still, Krokhex couldn't decipher what the thing was. Though its continued hurtle towards his body, he seemed distracted with the very wondering of its origins. A brow raised, and a trickle of drool from the corner of his mouth were evident.

Only did he catch it with twin brawny, buffed claws, and bring the foreign sphere to his eyes did he realize its... Wait, he didn't even know what it was! How could it be significant?

Krokhex shrugged, and decided quite quickly it deserved to go down his gullet.

However, before the large reptile could open his mouth any larger, he heard something.

"Krokhex! Krokhex!"

His name was being shrieked into the wind by a male voice.

He snapped his jaws shut, and gazed with a curious glance at the sideline of the massive open space he stood in. There was his coach, jumping and flailing his little pinkish arms about in a panic.

"Hi, coach!" Krokhex took great glee in waving to his human friend.

"Krokhex, you dolt! Run! Run!"

The mighty Lizardman cocked his oversized head.

"Run, coach?" He muttered to himself.

By now, he realized the disappointed, yet knowing, glares of his teammates.

Mundi of Despair, a quiet fellow as he was, threw his blue-scaled arms in the air, and near stomped off the field in anger.

Itzoatl, one of the many rookies, slapped a strong paw to the top of his snout in a effective facepalm.

Krokhex was confused, why the attitudes? He may have objected, started some lacking of intelligence conversation of how he should be respected, had it not been for the scratching sensation on his thigh.

He grunted, and cast his vision to the goblin gnawing on his leg, and reaching a tiny green limb out to the ball held high in his grasp.

Krokhex sighed.

"Piss off, mammal. I'm thinking." His two fingers formed up, and promptly flicked the diminutive creature in the forehead.

The little greenskin toppled to the grass, most likely dead, in a tangle of twitching limbs.

The Kroxigor, Krokhex, mumbled happily to himself, and went back to examining the object he'd caught.

"Krokhex! That's the ball!"

The second his coach screamed that line, the large Lizardman froze like a stiff board.

"The ball?!" He roared, fumbling the leather sphere as tens of other goblins ran in his general direction. The members of his team watched with drooped eyelids and lowered heads when he snatched the ball back up, and ran with a rumbling charge down the field.

The endzone! It was so close! My first Touchdown, he thought.

"No, Krokhex! No!" The human cried, waving his arms in the same direction the goblins had turned too, away from their own endzone.

Fools, Krokhex laughed mentally.

They'll let me get a Touchdown without even trying! Just as soon as those words formulated in his tiny brain, he slammed the bundle in his arms down with all his might, roaring triumphantly to the air above as he stopped in the endzone.

"TOUCHDOWN!" He screamed.

He turned back to his comrades, chest pumped out, and head high, expecting a uproar of approval from his teammates, and maybe a kiss from one of the cheerleaders!

"Damn it!"

The coach slunk into the empty space of the barren benches of the small playing field, holding his red face in similar shaking hands.

His fellow Lizardfolk were already halfway in the break pen by the side of the grounds, slapping sweat-slathered towels over their shoulders.

The ten Skink cheerleaders held claws to their hips, and leaf-palms absent of movement.

Krokhex looked down at the small, and dead, goblin he'd taken and driven into the grass of the endzone, his limbs unmoving and his face buried in the dirt.

On the other side of the field, the goblins of the Squig Burners team cackled triumphantly, one of them waving the ball from their stance in the opposite endzone.

The Blue Claw Strikers had lost... Again.

Krokhex remained where he was, tongue lolling out of his mouth, he sighed, and lifted a energybar (One of the many he kept in his belt) to his mouth, and chomped down on it.

/

Rune was dumbfounded.

They'd come so close! Victory had been in their grasp!

"But no-!" Rune muttered in his hands. "-The gods wouldn't allow that! Now would they?"

He reclined in the wood of the bench with contempt, watching with agony at the smaller goblin coach that laughed a few feet away from him.

"Wha are ya doin, man? Lern how ta play! And teach dat oaf what a ball iz!" He chuckled.

Even the tiny squig that stood by the coach, latched to his wrist by a small leash, held a insane grin on its ugly maw. The Squig Burners packed their things, gabbing and bragging the whole way, and left the field without even so much as a glance in coach Rune's direction.

They all just gathered their gear, and walked off into the surrounding rural area. Very soon, all that could be heard was the footsteps of the Skink cheerleaders going to their break pen, the crunching of Krokhex's energy bar, and the silence that surrounded it.

"Why I took this job... I'll never know." The man growled.

By now, the sun was setting in the distance, and he and the Blue Claw Strikers, his Lizardmen team, would retire to their cheap quarters in the tavern not too far from here.

Rune rubbed his black hair, and straightened the blue shirt he wore.

"Well... I suppose its good that coach forgot his bet money..." He smiled sadly, reaching next to him to retrieve the goblin leader's leather pouch that lay on the bench.

As his hand neared it, a tongue, purple and bluish in tint, shot out from the blackness below the bench, and stuck to the bag like a chameleon's tongue does a fly.

The pouch was sucked back under, to which, a burp was heard a second later. Rune growled, watching as the guilty squig squeezed its way between the bench seats, and scurried away after its goblin masters down the field.

"Life sucks." He stated, standing, and making his way across the grass field sideline to the break pen, where, the sounds of showers could be heard.

Rune was a fair fellow, he'd considered the job of coaching as an opportunity to leave his simple life in the Empire, and lead a band of heroes through the sports ranks.

However, whatever god or even sponsor looked down upon him had frowned considerably. The Blue Claw Strikers were an immediate, unadulterated, ludicrous, disaster the second they had entered their first field as rookies.

By now, with two wins and ten losses, Rune was just about ready to throw in the towel. He unhooked the wooden gate that led behind the wooden wall that bordered the stands and the pen, glancing at his silent team as all fifteen of them stood under a showerhead that jutted via pipe from the ground. He stopped briefly to view one of the Saurus members, a male named Hoajah.

"Sorry, coach..." He muttered in common.

"Next time, Hoajah." Rune supported, laying a hand on his wet shoulder.

Trekking through the shower pen proved with little converse between him and his teammates again. Finally, after the awkward pass, Rune entered the small section of the pen that was his private quarter. Little more than a chair and small oak table sat here, yet, it was enough for the coach.

Sitting in the creaking chair, he leaned against the table, initial and prior anger about the loss having faded, and a gradual familiarity filled him.

Rune had lived in the Old World for twenty five years, and yet, even though he'd a boring and uneventful life in the city of Ultendorf before his sports years, he sometimes wished he were back to prior. He ran a hand through his hair, and reached into the left pocket of his pants.

There was a small crumpled, bit of paper within its depths, and, with a quick yank, he retrieved the parchment to reveal the writing inside. Reforming the paper neatly, he read its contents, slowly.

"_Though you may never know my identity, Rune Alcuthore, let it be known, someone whom loves you is before you." _To this day, after a year of possessing the note, Rune Alcuthore had never been able to find the woman that had submitted the message to him, leaving the strip in his bed one night prior sleep.

"Coach?" He snatched the paper back to its place, and gazed up at the towering form of Hoajah, the Lizardman's reptilian eyes cast down to where he had hidden the note in his pocket.

"Are you alright?"

"Uh... Yeah, Hoajah, I'm fine. What do you need?" Rune smiled politely.

Hoajah had been the first recruit to the Strikers months ago, and already, the two had assumed a great friendship, not common among either of the races, and especially with the other.

"I was just checking in. You know, Krokhex is still out there." He jabbed a clawed thumb over his shoulder. Rune groaned, and attempted to gaze over the small wooden fence that surrounded his quarter.

"I'll go get him in a minute..." He replied. Hoajah nodded.

"How goes our financial situation?"

To be honest, their funds had all but vanished, yet, they still barely prevailed with enough income to satisfy the smallest of fees and expenses.

"Just hanging on." Rune replied dryly, letting the resulting silence follow without even an attempt to stop it.

"Good..." Hoajah trailed off, scratching a claw to the back of his scaled neck.

The two bright red, spiked shoulderplates he wore clanked as he did so.

"We should head back to the tavern." Rune said, standing from the creaking chair, and stepping to come closer to his friend. The opposite failed to respond, walking by his coach's side for the remainder of the trip back to the pen. It was going to be a long night, and a long season.

The town was utterly quiet, dark and seemingly absent of life all the way to the tavern. Rune had just pushed the door open when the loudest of crashes was heard.

Hoajah sighed audibly, nodding for Rune to continue with the half opened door. The human knew all too well what was in store for them when they entered the building, even Krokhex, whom stood behind the group, chomped down on a energybar to calm his nerves.

"Stupid 'Ead Crushas..." Uldawaq, the small Skink and one of the only players to achieve a touchdown, muttered beneath clenched teeth.

Rune hushed him, and walked in without a word. The Blue Claw Strikers stepped into the tavern and immediately worked their way to the oversized staircase in the back of the bar, hoping to avoid the fools that smashed chairs into each other and effectively punched and kicked.

Rune was all too familiar with the 'Ead Crushas, the Orc team having been living in the same tavern the whole season of gameplay with them. To put things bluntly, they were jerks.

"Ey! Look, itz da Blue Claw Suckerz!" A large, rather intimidating, Black Orc howled, the others around him stopping their brawl briefly to cackle with laughter.

Unfortunately for this particular Black Orc's ego, Rune was feeling rebellious tonight.

"Shut your tusked mouth, you mold stain." He growled.

The Orcs laughed harder.

"Aw, he wants ta fight! Lill babe didn't get 'hiz medasinn did 'e?" The monster retorted.

Rune felt the claw of Hoajah grab his shoulder.

"They're not worth it." He growled into the human's ear.

With a reluctance, they both joined the rest of their team up the multi-species-built staircase. The Orcs brawled into the night, celebrating some victory against a group of unfortunates earlier in the day. Rune suffered the whole thing without a wink of sleep that night.

/


End file.
